Vladimir Putin twists facts, trusts almost only himself and is waging a war that he grossly underestimated. This is what Russia’s president has in common with Josef Stalin, writes a Russian political scientist. At the same time, he is firmly in the saddle of his office – which he also has in common with the former Soviet dictator.
Vladimir Putin wants to be like Peter the Great: the tsar is the great imperator role model of the Russian president. But the truth is that the Kremlin ruler is more like another well-known figure in Russian history: Putin is “isolated, paranoid and extremely dangerous” – just like Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was in his final years, writes Andrei Kolesnikov of the Carnegie Endowment for International think tank Peace in the US magazine “Foreign Affairs”.
In his article, the Russian political analyst lists a number of similarities between Stalin and Putin, starting with the length of their reign: Stalin was the dictator of the Soviet Union for 26 years. From 1927 to 1953 he turned the huge empire into a socialist dictatorship. Although he defeated Nazi Germany, he also led the Soviet Union to ever “new autocratic extremes,” Kolesnikov sums up. Stalin shot hundreds of thousands of opponents or had them sent to prison camps, and millions of Soviet peasants were starved to death.
Putin has also been in power for more than 20 years – first as president, then as prime minister, and again as president since 2012. And since his last re-election in 2018, Putin has been governing more and more autocratically. Regime critics like Alexei Navalny are in labor camps. The constitution has been changed in favor of Putin, who can now rule until 2036. And in Ukraine, Putin is waging a brutal war of aggression. Kolesnikov analyzes that Russia returned to “Stalinist totalitarianism” under Putin.
Putin’s leadership style is also similar to Stalin’s. Only a very small circle of people have access to the Kremlin boss, otherwise Putin is largely isolated and usually makes himself scarce, especially since the Corona crisis he has only rarely appeared in public. Even Stalin only kept personal contact with very few people. With this small but loyal circle of leaders, he kept the Soviet elite under control.
Putin’s historical revisionism and propensity to lie can also be compared to Stalin. Russia’s president bends history to suit him. For example, Putin said of Peter the Great that he did not wage aggressive war against Sweden and the Baltic States in the 18th century, but merely reconquered territories that previously belonged to the Soviets. In a similar way, since February, Putin has been trying to legitimize the war against Ukraine: Kyiv must be liberated from the Nazis, Ukraine would commit genocide against Russians.
Stalin, too, did everything to portray the Soviets as victims. He justified the 1939 Winter War against Finland with an alleged attack on a Soviet border village. Historians now agree that the attack was a false flag operation, meaning the Soviets carried out the attack themselves in order to have a reason for the Finland campaign.
However, Stalin seems to have underestimated the Finns just as Putin underestimated the Ukrainians: when Soviet troops invaded Finland in 1939, Stalin assumed that the Finnish people would welcome the Soviets with open arms and that the war would be over quickly. Originally, Stalin wanted to occupy all of Finland, but after regrouping and strengthening the troops, the Soviet Union was able to gain territory and negotiate an armistice after almost four months of war. Eighty years later, Putin seems to have made a similar miscalculation.
The worldview of Stalin and Putin is also similar. The Russian President often speaks of a multipolar world order. A world divided into different spheres of influence. According to Putin, the world has been dominated by the United States up until now. He now wants to expand the Russian influence with all his might. Political scientist Kolesnikov writes that he thinks he can simply annex areas that he believes belong to the Russian sphere of influence. Putin made that clear earlier this year in his speech at the economic forum in St. Petersburg, when he settled accounts with the West. The USA in particular, but also the European Union, had lived at the expense of the rest of the world for years.
Stalin, too, saw the world as divided into spheres of influence. The dictator assumed “that he could mark the areas he thinks belong to him on a map with blanket lines,” says Kolesnikov.
In order for Putin to be able to expand his and Russia’s influence in the world, he needs a functioning power apparatus. Above all, he needs the oligarchs, the richest men in the country. They covered the Russian president’s back for years because they benefited from the Putin system. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and Gorbachev’s perestroika policy, they quickly became extremely rich. Since then, they have benefited from the fact that there is little competition and that power and money are so closely linked in Russia.
Most Russia experts therefore assume that Putin can only be overthrown by unrest within the elites. Only the oligarchs themselves could coup the president. But only when the benefit of a rebellion for the super-rich outweighs the risk.
Stalin also knew how to keep his power apparatus under control. The elites of the Soviet Union were “paralyzed with fear”. Nobody dared to overthrow Stalin.
At the moment, Putin is still firmly in the saddle. In any case, there are no obvious signs that his power is crumbling. But Putin is now 70 years old and has not yet decided on his successor. Just like Stalin, who died in 1953 at the age of 74 as a result of a stroke at his dacha.
Kolesnikov assumes that Russia’s elites are “waiting for the end of the tyrant and hope that he will somehow disappear”. He sees no other way to remove Putin from office.
There is currently speculation in Russia about a possible civil war, reports ntv Russia correspondent Rainer Munz. “What we do know is that there is a power struggle. Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner mercenary group, and Kadyrov, president of the Russian republic of Chechnya, against the army and secret services. There are rivalries. Whether that ultimately leads to it actually comes to a civil war is open.”
It is striking how Russian attitudes towards Stalin have changed during Putin’s presidency. In a 2001 survey by the Levada polling institute, 43 percent of those questioned gave Stalin a “negative” rating, but in 2016 only 17 percent rated him “negative.” In 2016, only 28 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “Stalin was a great leader”; most people in Russia were indifferent to Stalin. Last year, 56 percent of Russians suddenly approved of glorifying Stalin, the survey shows.
This could be the result of a change in the politics of remembrance in Russia. Stalin has been honored on national holidays since 2015, and the “Victory Day” on May 9 has “since also served to legitimize the war against Ukraine,” says the “Federal Agency for Civic Education.”
Stalin has now become popular in Russia despite being one of the greatest mass murderers in world history. Putin, on the other hand, threatens to become increasingly unpopular. The Ukraine war has been dragging on for nine months now and is affecting more and more Russian families because of the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of men. That could still become a problem for Putin. Putin completes the 26 years in the Kremlin in four years. Whether it will come to that seems more uncertain than ever.
